Strategic Initiatives

Vision, Mission, & Values

Vision: What is our aspiration?

To create a campus where every student matters and all students succeed.

Mission: What is our work?

Student Affairs is responsible for the institutional objective of creating an outstanding student experience that promotes personal, social, and intellectual growth. We offer a broad array of programs and services for students to support this mission and focus our work in five core functional areas:

Enhancing Learning

Advancing Diversity

Promoting Health and Safety

Creating Community

Managing Resources

As staff members within the Division of Student Affairs, we celebrate and promote safe and healthy community life for people of all races, ethnicities, religions, national origins, socio-economic classes, gender identities and expressions, sexual orientations, physical and learning abilities, nationalities, and ages by modeling behavior and articulating expectations that we live and work together in one community. We are bound together by our commitment to learning, our search for common understanding, and our respect for one another’s differences.

We have a deep understanding of and commitment to the fact that to be an outstanding division and an excellent University we must be multiculturally competent in all aspects of our work.

Values: What do we believe?

The University of Vermont is an educationally purposeful community seeking to prepare students to live in a diverse and changing world. We who work, live, study, teach, do research, conduct business, or participate in the University of Vermont are members of this community. As members, we believe in the transforming power of education and agree to help create and foster an environment where we can discover and reach our true potential.

We aspire to be a community that values:

RESPECT. We respect each other. We listen to each other, encourage each other and care about each other. We are strengthened by our diverse perspectives.

INTEGRITY. We value fairness, straightforward conduct, adherence to the facts, and sincerity. We acknowledge when things have not turned out the way we had hoped. As stewards of the University of Vermont, we are honest and ethical in all responsibilities entrusted to us.

INNOVATION. We want to be at the forefront of change and believe that the best way to lead is to learn from our successes and mistakes and continue to grow. We are forward-looking and break new ground in addressing important community and societal needs.

OPENNESS. We encourage the open exchange of information and ideas from all quarters of the community. We believe that through collaboration and participation, each of us has an important role in determining the direction and well-being of our community.

JUSTICE. As a just community, we unite against all forms of injustice, including, but not limited to, racism. We reject bigotry, oppression, degradation, and harassment, and we challenge injustice toward any member of our community.

RESPONSIBILITY. We are personally and collectively responsible for our words and deeds. We stand together to uphold our common ground.